This is Amelia Rayno's third season on the Gophers men's basketball beat. She learned college basketball in North Carolina (Go Tar Heels!), where fanhood is not an option. In 2010, she joined the Star Tribune after graduating from Boston's Emerson College, which sadly had no exciting D-I college hoops to latch onto. Amelia has also worked on the sports desk at the Boston Globe and interned at the Detroit News.

Asking the Gophers after the win over Southwest Baptist, the players said they were mostly satisfied with what they accomplished in two preseason games.

They won two (blowouts); no one got hurt; they learned a few lessons.

And I’ll mostly agree with that. The team showed some potential and looked pretty good, at times. On the flip side of that, there are a couple of glaring weaknesses that need to be quickly tended to.

Let’s go through it all:

The Good:

We’ve expected it, and tonight the Gophers put their athleticism on display with a barrage of dunks and high-flying acrobatics, including a dunk by Trevor Mbakwe, his first of the season.

Joe Coleman has been looking fantastic around the basket in these first couple games. He’s converting, the aggressiveness is there, he’s getting to the free throw line and making his shots and he’s doing some of the little things that were missing from his game last year. It’s too early to make too much of his gains, but it’s clear the sophomore is an improved player from a year ago.

Rodney Williams has had a nice couple of games as well, especially tonight, when he finished with 13 points and eight rebounds. It’s a good sign of continuance after all the improvement we saw from him in the postseason.

Overall, the rebounding was much better, particularly in the second half. At halftime, the Gophers had a rebounding advantage of just 18-14 – despite the fact that SWB’s big men liked to play out on the perimeter. But heading into the second half the Gophers picked it up. Everyone except Kendall Shell and Chris Halvorson got at least two rebounds and the team finished with 47.

The Bad:

The Gophers have been fantastic in the paint. But where is the same effort mid-range and from the three-point range? I get that it was just “working” in the two exhibitions. But isn’t preseason the time where a team tests out where it is in a number of aspects? Right now, we can only assume what we see from the three-point numbers, which aren’t pretty.

The Gophers got to the line some tonight, but then only made 11 of 16 shots.

Yes, the 3-pointers went down substantially as the game wore on, but some of that was because the Bearcats simply stopped making them. Ten 3-pointers against a more balanced offense could be deadly.

The Ugly:

Hold on to the ball! The Gophers had 17 turnovers on Monday after amassing 14 in the previous game. Not a great way to start of the season and brings back dangerous memories of a year ago, when the Gophers often turn-turn-turned their way over to a loss.